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The original site was designed by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis. The current layout was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde.

Monday, September 11, 2006

How We Became Important

Five years seems like such a long time ago. Among other things, both my parents were still alive. (Neither is now.) I was not yet married. I had never heard of blogs. I had never been to Finland (a regular destination for me in recent years because of my friend Marko). I had never been harassed by agents of the Department of Homeland Security. There was no Department of Homeland Security. And there was no Patriot Act, the most dangerous, destructive (of civil liberties) and retrogressive piece of legislation in memory, which now holds over every head in this country (specially Muslim and Arab ones) the dark threat of indefinite detention at Guantanamo, without charge or due process.

The thing I remember most clearly about the day of the attacks is speaking to my mother in Karachi at some point. It wasn't a particularly substantive exchange, but it was nice to hear her voice, and a relief, I imagine, for her to hear mine. For days afterwards one went around as if in a dream. Nothing felt real. The atmosphere in New York City took a long time to return to anything like normal, and during that period one's emotions remained unpredictable and turbulent. September 11th itself was, of course, the worst. By afternoon of that bright autumn day, my uptown apartment had become a makeshift refugee camp for a number of friends who lived near the World Trade Center, and who could no longer go home. At some point on that day, we all went out en masse to try and get a late lunch, only to find an eerie silence on Broadway. All traffic had been stopped in Manhattan. For some odd reason, the few people present were whispering to each other, if speaking at all. After a while, armored personnel carriers with uniformed soldiers began slowly rolling down the streets, while F-14 Tomcats circled overhead. People in civilian dress carrying submachine guns quietly appeared on the street corners. (Later, I learned they were FBI agents.) It was not clear then if there would be further attacks. One felt like one was in a war zone, and I was reminded of my recurring childhood nightmares after Pakistan's 1971 war with India. Every little while, someone in our group would suddenly break into tears.

That night, we slept fitfully, gripped by the confusion of sadness, fear, anger. The next day, I managed to collect myself enough to send an email to friends and family expressing some of what I felt. I reproduce that message here:

Hello,

As time elapses, I am more clearly able to identify and articulate what it is that has been making me so sad about this attack. It is this: some cities do not belong to any particular country but are treasures for all people; cosmopolitan and international by nature, they are the repositories of our shared world culture and artistic production, testaments to what is common and binding among diverse peoples, and sources of creative energy. They come to stand for our notions of community and brotherhood. New York has been by far the most magnificent of these world treasures, and it still is today. Here, on every block you will meet people from forty different countries. Here you can speak Urdu with the cab drivers, and Korean at the grocery store. Here, bhangra rhythms and classical sitar mix with calypso and Finnish ambient chants. Here is where mosques and synagogues are separated by no green-lines. Here is where Rodney King's wish has mostly come true: we do get along. This city is the least provincial; no nationalism flourishes here. It is the most potent fountainhead of intellectual and artistic endeavor. What this mindless attack has done is desecrate and damage the ideals of international community that this city not only symbolizes, but instantiates as fact and lovely example. And it is this desecration which is so devastatingly heart-breaking.

I recall two things: one, the pleasure and awe with which my mother took in the incomparably stunning view from the 110th floor observation deck of the World Trade Center on a visit from Pakistan in 1974. And two, her reading in Urdu, the words of welcome inscribed in the lobby of that building in over one hundred languages, to all people of the world. Alas, no one shall ever do either again.

Abbas

On that day, the only thing that I was, was a New Yorker. A New Yorker who loved his wounded city more than ever. And one whose only allegiance was to the sentimental cosmopolitan ideal that this city somehow still manages to embody even today. Probably because many people were still in shock and unable to say anything, this email was forwarded along and eventually ended up being one of those things that went around the internet in ever-wider circles. I received hundreds of appreciative emails in reply and my two little paragraphs were translated into various languages and published in newspapers. They were even read aloud by European political leaders at emergency meetings and hastily assembled conferences. People started asking me my opinion on what had happened, and along with all the other bewildering sentiments, I started feeling inflated.

A little over a week later, I found out that one of my close friends, Ehtesham U. Raja, who had so far been unaccounted for, had actually died in the World Trade Center. He had been attending a business meeting that fateful morning in Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 107th floor of the WTC. Again, while trying to recover from this blow, I received many messages of sympathy. And I liked it. And then I felt disgusted for feeling self-important through my friend's death. It was at that time, while sitting one afternoon in our living room with my wife Margit, in the midst of this confusing tempest of fast-changing emotions, that I sarcastically spewed out (for catharsis) what could in a very generous mood be considered a prose poem. I readily admit that I am no poet, and perhaps there is a bit of what Vladimir Nabokov once rightly described as (something like) "the passing around of specimens of one's sputum for inspection" about my making public for the first time now what I had written that day, but in the spirit of telling what this horrific event did to us New Yorkers, I adduce it here. Please be gentle in judging me: